Predictors of Burnout in Social Workers: The COVID-19 Pandemic as a Scenario for Analysis

Exploring Social Work Practitioners' Perspectives on the Contributors to Burnout since the COVID-19 Pandemic

Burnout has a historic and disproportionate impact on social workers and is one important contributor to the ongoing health and behavioral health workforce crisis in the United States. Little is known, however, about social workers' experiences of burnout and their perceptions of factors that contribute to burnout since the COVID-19 pandemic. This study sought to explore this by answering the following research questions: (a) To what extent are social workers in South Carolina experiencing burnout? and (b) What do South Carolina social workers view as the top reasons for burnout in their professional role? Seventy social work practitioners and leaders from South Carolina completed an online survey during Fall 2022 that included the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and an open-ended question focused on identifying their perceptions of the top three reasons for burnout in the profession. Findings suggest that social workers in this study are experiencing moderate levels of burnout since the COVID-19 pandemic and report primarily organizational (83 percent) contributors to burnout. They also identified individual (36 percent), systemic (29 percent), and interpersonal (27 percent) contributors to burnout. Implications are discussed related to policy and practice responses to prevent and address burnout among social workers.

Relationship between mental fatigue and burnout syndrome in remote workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: an integrative review

This study aimed to analyze the scientific evidence available in the literature addressing the relationship between mental fatigue and burnout associated with teleworking during the COVID-19 pandemic through an integrative review. This review searched the following databases: PubMed, Scopus, Taylor & Francis, Embase, ScienceDirect, and SciELO using the DeCS and MeSH health sciences descriptors. The included articles were published between March and December 2021, during the pandemic. Of a total of 224 results, 215 articles were excluded and 9 were considered for the preparation of this integrative review. Mental fatigue was related to technostress, somatic symptoms such as anxiety and insomnia (p < 0.05), and loss of motivation (p < 0.05). Burnout was positively associated with work overload, high interdependence, and lower role clarity. The presence of a stressful factor and a protective factor was evidenced in burnout: intrusive leadership and workaholism, respectively. Greater exhaustion was observed in workers belonging to generation X (41 to 55 years old). Mental fatigue is related to exhaustion in the productive, physical, and psychological dimensions of individuals. Addiction to work has moderated this phenomenon, however, it is urgent to limit and optimize work hours as well as promote disconnection and rest among workers within the framework of a healthy work policy.

Burnout and resilience at work among health professionals serving in tertiary hospitals, in Ethiopia

Background

The quality of healthcare service is strongly affected by the health professionals' levels of burnout and resilience at work (RaW). Developing resilience is a key component of medical professionalism. Although burnout and resilience are indicators used to assess the level of workplace hardship, there is a dearth of information in most developing countries, including Ethiopia.

Objective

To assess the levels of burnout and 'resilience at work' among health professionals who work in the surgical care departments in teaching Ethiopian hospitals.

Methods

A cross-sectional study design was applied among health professionals employed in surgical, gynecologic, and obstetric (Gyn/Obs) departments of two acute-care hospitals (n = 388). A structured self-administered English version questionnaire, consisting of validated scales to measure RaW and burnout, was used to collect the data;22 items of Maslach's burnout inventory human service survey tool and 20 items of Win wood's resilience at work' measuring tool" was employed to assess the health professionals' burnout level and Resilience at work, respectively. Linear logistics regression was employed for inferential statistical analysis to identify factors that predict RaW and burnout.

Results

Burnout syndrome was shown among 101 (26.0%) study participants. Furthermore, 205 (52.8%), 150 (38.7%), and 125 (32.2%) participants presented high emotional exhaustion, high depersonalization, and low personal accomplishment, respectively. Emotional exhaustion was predicted by the participants' profession, the hope of promotion, professional recognition, and workload. Depersonalization was predicted by age, profession, and perceived workload of the participants. The predictors for personal accomplishment were profession, relationship at work, professional recognition, and having a managerial position in addition to clinical duty. The participants' mean RaW score was 78.36 (Standard deviation ±17.78). A negative association was found between RaW and emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. In contrast, a positive association was identified between RaW and personal accomplishment. The type of profession and marital status were positive predictors of RaW.

Conclusion

A substantial amount of health professionals experience high burnout in one or more burnout dimensions. Level of RaW is more affected by burnout syndrome. Therefore, promoting activities that increase the level of professional RaW and recognition in their professional practice is needed to reduce job burnout. These findings are especially important concerning low socio-economic countries, as resilience is a vital component of the development of healthcare systems.

Explaining and addressing the limitations in usefulness of available estimated prevalence figures relating to burnout in family doctors: Evidence from a systematic scoping literature review

Burnout in family doctors (FDs) affects their well-being, patient care, and healthcare organizations, and is considered common worldwide. However, its measurement has been so inconsistent that whether the widely divergent prevalence figures can be meaningfully interpreted has been questioned. Our aim was to go further than previous systematic reviews to explore the meaning contribution and usefulness of FD-burnout prevalence estimates. Worldwide literature was systematically reviewed using Levac's scoping framework, with 249 papers undergoing full-text review. Of 176 studies measuring burnout, 78% used the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), which measures burnout as now defined by the World Health Organization. We, therefore, concentrated on the MBI. Its burnout measurement was markedly inconsistent, with prevalence estimates ranging from 2.8% to 85.7%. Researchers made prevalence claims relating to burnout severity and implied diagnoses based on participants' MBI scores, even though the MBI has not been validated as a clinical or diagnostic tool. Except when comparisons were possible between certain studies, prevalence figures provided limited meaning and added little to the understanding of burnout in FDs. Our review revealed a lack of research-supported meaningful information about the prevalence of FD burnout and that care is required to avoid drawing unsubstantiated conclusions from prevalence results. This paper's overall purpose is to propose how obtaining meaningful prevalence estimates can begin, which are recognized as key to developing improved prevention policies and interventions. Researchers must adopt a consistent means to measure burnout, use the MBI as its authors intended, and explore making progress through quantitative and qualitative collaboration.

Reflections on experiential training in meaning-centered psychotherapy: How MCP ended up facilitating professional wellbeing

OBJECTIVE

Meaning-centered psychotherapy (MCP) principles may provide a framework for engaging healthcare professionals in meaning-centered exploration as a novel approach to prevent burnout and enhance wellbeing in healthcare professionals through heightening personal meaning. This case study aimed to teach MCP to masters-trained social workers for use with medical patients. While the primary aim was to teach MCP to masters-trained social workers, this proof-of-concept project and this paper focus on a secondary aim of enhancing meaning and connection in the virtual workplace.

METHODS

A group of social workers participated in a 7-session MCP pilot from October 13th to November 24th, 2020. After each session, participants were asked to complete an anonymous continuing education evaluation with questions regarding clarity, organization, and relevance of the presentation related to use with their patient populations. Additional open-ended items queried participants for general comments about their experience using MCP to enhance professional fulfillment during COVID-19.

RESULTS

Nine social workers participated in the MCP pilot. Several qualitative themes emerged, including enhanced meaning, communication, connection, and agency in the virtual workplace.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESULTS

This pilot demonstrated the feasibility and acceptability of using an adapted MCP instruction with hospital-based social workers during the COVID-19 pandemic to facilitate wellbeing. While MCP was originally created to intervene with patients with life-threatening illnesses, the brief, manualized experiential nature of the intervention lends itself to modification with staff for the purpose of enhancing meaning and community in their own lives.

The Perceived Job Performance of Child Welfare Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

While the evidence on the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being of frontline social workers is emerging, the research on the impact of the pandemic on their performance is scarce. The presented study explores how the relationship between work environment predictors and perceived stress explains the job performance of child welfare social workers during the pandemic using survey responses of 878 child welfare social workers. The findings revealed the mechanism through which environment predictors and perceived stress interacted in explaining job performance during a time of large-scale crisis. We found that C.W. social workers who experienced greater COVID-19-related service restrictions reported poorer job performance, that perceived stress disrupted workers' supervision and autonomy, and that supervision and job autonomy protected C.W. social workers from the adverse effects of perceived stress and workload on their job performance. Conclusions included the importance of autonomy and supervision in mitigating job-related stressors and the need to adapt and enhance child welfare supervision during times of national crisis.

Principles for Managing Burnout among Catholic Church Professionals

While a large body of research literature has explored the assessment, treatment, and prevention of worker burnout, much less research has focused on the unique issues associated with burnout in religious organizations, especially within the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic Church employees, whether clerics or laypersons, are embedded within a 2,000-year-old global hierarchical structure and organization that is unique in that it includes clerics with vows of chastity, obedience, and often poverty as well as ongoing crises related to clerical sexual abuse scandals, significant financial stressors, and a faith tradition that often overvalues sacrifice and suffering. The purpose of this brief article is to highlight burnout issues among Roman Catholic Church employees and offer principles and strategies for recognizing, treating, and avoiding burnout among these professionals. Five key principles for burnout management as well as several case examples are also presented.

Burnout, negative emotions, and wellbeing among social workers in China after community lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic: Mediating roles of trait mindfulness

Objective

This study aimed to investigate burnout situation of social workers (SWs) who experienced the COVID-19 pandemic-related community lockdown 1 year before, and to assess the protective value of trait mindfulness (TM) in states of burnout.

Method

We surveyed the burnout, trait mindfulness, negative emotions (NEs) and wellbeing (WB) of 182 social workers provided services to Wuhan lockdowns community by COVID-19 one year before. Burnout were measured using the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey; TM using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale; NEs using the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21; and WB using the General Wellbeing Schedule. We also performed correlation regression analysis and mediation test for burnout, TM, NEs, and WB.

Results

Among the 182 respondents, 75 (41.2%) still suffered from severe burnout. TM was negatively correlated with burnout (r = -0.623), negatively correlated with NEs (r = -0.560), and positively correlated with WB (r = 0.617). Burnout had a significantly positive correlation with NEs (r = 0.544) and a significantly negative correlation with WB (r = -0.666). Further, WB had significantly negative correlation with NEs (r = -0.758). After controlling for age, gender, marital status, educational level, and years of employment, burnout had a significantly positive predictive effect on NEs (β = 0.509), whereas TM had a significantly negative predictive effect on NEs (β = -0.334). TM played a partial mediating role in the effect of burnout on NEs, with a mediating effect and effect ratio of 0.088 and 39.7%, respectively. Burnout had a significantly negative predictive effect on WB (β = -0.598), whereas TM had a significantly positive predictive effect on WB (β = 0.299). TM played a partial mediating role in the effect of burnout on NEs, with a mediating effect and effect ratio of -0.164 and 30.3%, respectively. WB had a significantly negative predictive effect on NEs (β = -0.711), and it played a partial mediating role in the effect of burnout on NEs, with a mediating effect and effect ratio of 0.185 and 83.3%, respectively.

Conclusion

The current levels of burnout among local SWs remained high 1 year after the community lockdowns. TM played a mediating role in the relationship between burnout, NEs, and WB. Concomitantly, WB played a mediating role in the relationship between burnout and NEs. Therefore, in the context of burnout, TM is a protective factor for reducing emotional stress and risks of developing psychiatric disorders through the enhancement of WB.

Portuguese Volunteer Firefighters in the Context of the Challenges Posed by the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is producing not only epidemiological consequences on a global scale, but also political, economic, and social repercussions. The health care professionals that have been on the front lines fighting the pandemic need the support and assistance of other organizations to meet the many daily challenges. Volunteer firefighters stand out for their outreach approach and implementation of the Human2Human paradigm that has enabled them to meet the needs of the most vulnerable population that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic. This study adopts an ethnographic-action method considering Portuguese volunteer firefighters to explore the characteristics and relevance of these initiatives in areas such as combating isolation, medical assistance, containing the spread of COVID-19, and promoting public–private partnerships. The findings reveal that factors associated with altruism are central elements in the emergence of these initiatives, although some locally or nationally coordinated initiatives have been replicated in other contexts. It is also noteworthy that volunteer firefighters also present initiatives that can be fit into more than one category.

Evaluating the impact of coronavirus disease on burnout among healthcare workers using maslach burnout inventory tool: A systematic review

Background

Burnout has been prevalent among healthcare workers (HCWs). However, the effect of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic on this phenomenon in HCWs is unclear.

Objective

This systematic review aims to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on burnout of HCWs using Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI).

Methods

A systematic search was performed on PubMed database for articles published between 1 December 2019 and 30 June 2021. Search strategy combined terms for HCWs, COVID-19, burnout, and MBI. The main outcome of interest was burnout, including both mean prevalence and MBI scores for high emotional exhaustion (EE), high depersonalisation (DP) and low personal accomplishment (PA).

Results

Four cohort studies, 90 cross-sectional studies and one randomised-controlled trial were included for review. Only one cohort study compared burnout data among HCWs before and during COVID-19. It reported a statistically significant increase in mean EE and PA scores from 21.9 to 24.8 ( p = .001), and 42.7 to 48.7 ( p = .001), respectively. The remaining studies only evaluated burnout data during COVID-19 but were missing burnout data prior to the pandemic for comparison. Across these studies, the overall mean prevalence of burnout among HCWs was 39.95%, with mean MBI EE scores of 22.07, DP scores of 7.83, and PA scores of 32.53. Burnout outcomes were generally comparable across specific healthcare professions such as doctors and nurses.

Conclusion

Whilst quality research elucidating the effect of pandemic on burnout is lacking, current burnout prevalence among HCWs during COVID-19 is notable.

Resilience at Work, Burnout, Secondary Trauma, and Compassion Satisfaction of Social Workers Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic

Social workers during the COVID-19 pandemic are at risk due to exposure to varied populations in need, which may impact their resilience, burnout, secondary trauma, and compassion satisfaction. The study assessed resilience at work, burnout, secondary trauma, and compassion satisfaction among social workers in Israel during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (May to June 2020). A convenience sample of 332 social workers (291 women (87.6%)) filled out an online, structured questionnaire that included demographics, a professional quality of life scale (ProQOL) (including three subscales), and resilience at work (RAW) (including seven subscales). The overall mean of the RAW was medium (M = 71, SD ± 8.9) compared to standardized scores. The mean scores of two of the subscales of the RAW, maintaining perspective and staying healthy, were low. The mean scores of the sub-scales of ProQOL were: compassion satisfaction was close to the 50th percentile (M = 48.25); burnout (M = 30.18) and secondary trauma (M = 26.27) were below the 25th percentile. Significant low to medium positive associations were found between all the dependent variables, except for staying healthy. A negative association was identified between compassion satisfaction and burnout, as well as between compassion satisfaction and secondary trauma. High levels of compassion satisfaction and contentment, low levels of secondary trauma, and having a managerial position were predicted to be 40% of the RAW. Lower levels of maintaining perspective, secondary trauma, and being younger predicted 27% of burnout. Higher levels of finding your calling, living authentically, maintaining perspective, interacting cooperatively, being older, and not being a manager predicted 58% of compassion satisfaction. Lower levels of burnout, maintaining perspective, and being younger predicted 36% of secondary trauma. As the COVID-19 pandemic still challenges most societies, policymakers should consider ways to integrate mechanisms that will enhance social workers' resilience at work.

Burnout: A Review of Theory and Measurement

A growing body of empirical evidence shows that occupational health is now more relevant than ever due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This review focuses on burnout, an occupational phenomenon that results from chronic stress in the workplace. After analyzing how burnout occurs and its different dimensions, the following aspects are discussed: (1) Description of the factors that can trigger burnout and the individual factors that have been proposed to modulate it, (2) identification of the effects that burnout generates at both individual and organizational levels, (3) presentation of the main actions that can be used to prevent and/or reduce burnout, and (4) recapitulation of the main tools that have been developed so far to measure burnout, both from a generic perspective or applied to specific occupations. Furthermore, this review summarizes the main contributions of the papers that comprise the Special Issue on "Occupational Stress and Health: Psychological Burden and Burnout", which represent an advance in the theoretical and practical understanding of burnout.